Thursday, July 21, 2011

Q: Think of an adjective that might describe a child before a summer vacation. Change the second letter to the next letter of the alphabet, and you'll name someone you might see in a hospital. Who is it?

I'm sorry to dash your hopes, there are no clues in this post today.

Edit: In printing, there's an em dash (—) and an en dash (–), related in size to the printed letter 'm' and 'n', respectively. That was a hint to the letters that are changed. Also, the sentence included "I'm" and "in", the prefixes to the answers.

59 comments:

Here's my standard reminder... don't post the answer or any hints that could lead directly to the answer (e.g. via Google or Bing) before the deadline of Thursday at 3pm ET. If you know the answer, click the link and submit it to NPR, but don't give it away here.

You may provide indirect hints to the answer to show you know it, but make sure they don't give the answer away. You can openly discuss your hints and the answer after the Thursday deadline. Thank you.

Agreed Curtis, this week's was a disappointment. I hate to admit this but I couldn't get the answer for a while, and then when it hit me I felt cheated. It's not a particularly clever use of the language.

Think of places where you may find frogs and children on summer vacation. Add the first answer to this week's challenge. Rearrange the result and you get a word that states your reaction to the NPR puzzle.

Speaking of roundups. I am a cowboy buff and am more than a little upset at how things keep changing in this regard. It always seems to begin with terminology. A perfect example is the Roundup. This is where the cowboys ride out among the herd and separate the yearlings and drive them in to be branded. The males are then castrated and instead of becoming bulls, now become steers.Well, nothing much has changed in this regard except the terminology. As I mentioned they used to be called Roundups. Nowadays, with all the yuppie influence on society they are called Steering Committees.

@SDB, I agree. I immediately thought "who do you see at a hospital? -- Doctors and patients". That made me think of "patience" and "impatience" and the answer came right after that. Total solving time, perhaps 3 seconds.

Blaine:Right! And it is not even satisfying. At least when I solved the Helmet Kohl puzzle as I was reading it, I felt somewhat pleased with myself for having knowledge of many past and present world leaders, but not this disappointing excuse for a puzzle.

Blaine, count me as another of your readers who has received "the call." I hope you and all the fantastic regular commenters will be cheering me on tomorrow as I play the puzzle! I'm so excited and nervous. Anyone have any tips?

Think of places where you may find frogs and children on summer vacation. Add the first answer to this week's challenge. Rearrange the result and you get a word that states your reaction to the NPR puzzle.

Frogs and children on summer vacation can sometimes be seen hanging out around PONDS. Add that to IMPATIENT and rearrange to spell

I played on-air in ’05. I would suggest being alone in a quiet room with perhaps a pencil and piece of paper at the ready. Besides that, try to relax and have fun. Others of us here have lived through it :)

DocT:What a shame! I need Scrabble like I need George W. Bush's memoir (all 7 pages). Did they send the USA edition, or the Canadian Scrabble with the extra "A"s? It seems even stranger to me that they do not have a photo of the lapel pin on the NPR site.

Curiouser and curiouser. I was just visited by a uniformed agent of the federal government, who handed me a box. Therein was a copy of "Sudoku Lovers Only", "Little Black (and White) Book of Crosswords" (both by Will Shortz) and "Where the Stress Falls" by Susan Sontag. Make of that what you will! :)

The enclosed invoice said that the third book was to be "Grammar Girl's 101 Words Every High School Graduate Needs to Know". Evidently the picker mis-picked :)